The Ultimate Relationship Killer

“At least I knew she loved us. And she always came through in the end,” I said to my therapist years ago when describing my mother.

“What do you mean?” asked Dr. Ron.

“When push came to shove...you know, she always came through?” I stammered.

“Why did it always have to get to that point for her to act?” replied Dr. Ron with a tinge of exasperation.

Boom!

Those 14 words shone one hell of a bright light on a parenting pattern I hadn’t acknowledged for the underlying emotional abusiveness it contained. Up until that point, I believed my mother’s 11th-hour actions were a strength -- like the time she rushed into the gymnastics meet, minutes before start time to bring me the brand new team leotard. Never mind the rest of the team had theirs three weeks before.

When Dr. Ron looked me dead in the eye and interpreted the origins of my anxiety, I adored him like a parent, like the attuned, responsive caretaker every child should have. Knowing why you’re anxious doesn’t make you less anxiety-sensitive, but the truth brings you one step closer to change.

This insight equipped me with the clinical incisiveness to zero in on the narcissistic tendencies of my clients’ parents, as well as their dependency issues.

Your Takeaways

If you weren’t blessed with caretakers who put your needs before their own:

* May you learn to self-parent in a way that teaches you not to settle.

* May you feel anything but grateful when your partner brings flowers after five straight days of the silent treatment. May you read through the blurred lines when she texts, “I was thinking about calling last week but things got crazy.”

* May you recognize and register excuses like a CIA agent collects foreign intelligence.

Because you don’t deserve to be treated like a second-class citizen, and you’re not a child anymore.

Make the following scripts part of your vernacular:

“This isn’t working. Here’s a few recent examples of when you’ve reneged on your word.”

“Did I miss the call that you planned to stop by tonight? If you want to see me, ask before assuming I’m free. Right now I'm busy.”

Don’t lap up scraps because you’re emotionally starved. You may be hungry, but you’re not desperate.

There is a lot here to think about and discuss, and I do think its am important lesson for people to take to heart not to lap up the emotional scraps.

But what kind of bothers me is the blame we lay on parents, calling their own inability to parent us perfectly as "emotional abuse" rather than giving them the compassion they might deserve as imperfect human beings as well. Stressed working mothers of three children coming from their own imperfect childhoods don't suddenly develop perfect parenting strategies out of a vacuum - and the inability to do so is not abuse nor is it narcissism. Rather, I'd argue some of it is the reality of the human condition, some of it is the reality of our social construct that lacks a true village to support families leaving so many mothers without adequate support (financial, emotional, social, etc).

Children do end up products of their parents. But maybe we could change how we talk about this. I'm not sure it's helpful to blame our parents (and then ourselves when we fall short as parents). I would argue that compassion goes a long way toward building loving families - and that includes compassion for our parents, too (even as we struggle to come to terms with their imperfections).

Blanket statements are just not useful. Individuals are reading these articles are looking for truths to resonate with their individual circumstances. The experiences of the individual readers will run the full gamut of the human experience. Not every article will resonate with every reader.

On the flip side of "Anonymous'" statement, many adults carry with them the messages that they were raised with that their parents were not to be questioned. As adults, they need to find ways to look at the realities of what they grew up with, getting past the message not to question their past or their parents. Frankly, some of what happens to to some kids is really messed up.

I grew up thinking that I was not loved as the eldest of my parents' children. To recognize and accept that they were human beings with personality disorders finally gave me the understanding to FORGIVE AND BLESS THEM. Because of their lack of skills parenting plus emotional disfunction I am able now to recognize what made me strong as well as disfunctional when it comes to relationships, be husbands, children, family or friends.And I am grateful that it has given me the opportunity to finaly conquer y anxiety and fear of committment. I have come to the conclusion that all happens for a reason. It has given me peace and happiness.

It is not blame to understand where the anxiety that one may have comes from. Most of our deep rooted issues come from our most important relationships which are to our parents. It seems like justifications to say that mothers lack adequate support because both our parents affect us and one being financially stable or having support does not excuse any type of behavior toward a child. If you are emotionally unstable it is your responsibility to address it and not ride that excuse so you can act however you want. Just because a parent is not aware that they are in fact being emotionally abusive, or that they themselves had childhood issues again does not excuse the behavior because at the end of the day it affects us. Lastly, it is not the responsibility of the child being subjected throughout the years to their parents issues, to be compassionate. The responsible adult, and parent should make this the priority. It is a cop out to say that it wasn't the parents fault. Ok they didn't mean to, or they had their own reasons, but you still affect someone, and it does not make it ok, or give you license to continue to negatively affect someone for the rest of their life.

You make relevant points. True -- as adults we're not privy to what our parents were going through back then and it's not fair to lay blame solely on upbringing. And compassion is the name of the human game, you're right.

Be that as it may, I stand by the contents in my article. I provided a single example from childhood. I would hope that readers would understand there were other instances. There is no excuse for creating a dynamic whereby your children are accustomed to having their needs come second, if at all. Our job as parents is to put the needs of our children first. Period.

The point of your article was well put, I feel. Our parents can have damaged us in ways to which we may remain oblivious. Recognizing their fault and their blame can go far in at least being aware of our own relational weaknesses and flaws if not resolving them.

Perhaps qualification would have improved your article. As others have addressed, often our our parents' emotionally-abusive behavior was not necessarily done wittingly nor knowingly -- rather, our parents were themselves the products of earlier emotional abuse or deficiencies. That doesn't absolve them -- after all, a rabid dog is dangerous even if it contracted rabies through no fault of its own. But, although it can be emotionally difficult, it's sometimes necessary to distinguish the "rabies" and even the "rabies carrier" from the question "why and for what purpose did that rabid carrier subsequently infect me?" I can treat my rabies and identify who infected me without needing to malign that one who bit me.

As you well said, " Our job as parents is to put the needs of our children first. Period." Meaning ANY woman (or man) who "wants to have a baby because, well...I, I just want to have a child!" is simply motivated by natural biological impetus to reproduce, not by a rational, responsible, deliberated consideration of all involved in being a mother (or father) nor whether she is indeed fit and prepared emotionally, financially, medically, and relationally to nurture and equip a young human life. Unless she considers more the seriousness and the consequences of being a parent, and of not only how she'll affect her own child's future life but also how she'll thereby affect the lives of all others her child will interact with for as many as the next 70 or so years, then, she probably lacks the "child's-needs-first" attitude and is merely wanting a baby out of her own (although unconscious) selfishness. Babies aren't dolls, nor hobbies, nor pets; we can't pick-and-choose in such a way as to be able to say. "Of course I love my kids!" while actually doing for them only what makes ourselves feel good or is not inconvenient. Babies are human beings whose upbringing will critically affect not only their adult selves but society and everyone around them throughout their lives.

Would needing that attitude of "if I have a child, it must only be from a rational, objective decision, not from any emotional sentiment nor motherhood impulse" mean most of us should therefore NOT be parents? Even though I'm a long-married and a father of now-adult children, I believe, probably YES.
Would needing to being emotionally, financially, medically, and relationally fit and prepared disqualify many if not not most of us from being parents? Again, probably YES.

In contrast to early human history when population was tiny and so yielding to our biological impetus to having babies benefited our species, the human species is in now in no danger of extinction due to too few offspring; indeed, quite the contrary, with population growth and our consumption of resources. So even most of us not bearing children would likely only benefit humanity.

Regarding your point that a qualification would've clarified the role of parenting, yes -- we aren't privy to what our parents were going through -- yes -- I should've included this line in the article. Perhaps that would've shed light on the actual point which is never settle for someone who only shows up for you at the last minute.

Congratulations on your long-married status and the raising of your adult children.

I thought the article was insightful and really well-written. My mother is a drug addict and has borderline personality disorder and did not take proper care of my sister and me, to such an extent that we had to clean the house and cook our own food at 8 years old; we had to buy our own groceries with money from part-time jobs and hide it in the closet so my mother's druggie boyfriend wouldn't eat it; my mother took us to her drug dealer's houses with her. So yeah, to say she put our needs second is an understatement. My sister and I lead happy, successful lives today (thanks to our supportive grandparents and also to a lot of luck), and when problems come up in my adult life, I rarely blame my mother; however, I can't deny that a lot of those events and my mother's behavior affected me and my personality.

Of course there are people who blame their parents for their problems incorrectly. There are also parents who were sincerely good, and/or parents who were doing their best. If you think you are one of those parents, or if you are an adult child of one of those parents, then good for you: this article does not apply to you and you can disregard the lesson. But the message really resonated with me and I thank the author for sharing it.

Danielle: if you read my comment carefully, you will read that I started by saying that as I child I felt unloved, that I am grateful that even with such disfunctional parents I was able, just like you, to grow up strong in some areas and not so strong in relationships...I took and take responsibility for turning a very ugly period in my life intoi= a positive one - y learning from it. I was not a perfect mother but I loved and love my children - which is a lot more than I got a child: y loved I mean that a parent is responsive and attentivee to the childrens physical and emotional being I also thought the article was very insigntful.

Hi Linda -
Excellent piece, and, as a fellow therapist, I didn't take it that you were trying to "lay blame" on your mom for your life, so to speak. You were working on an imbedded emotional pattern that needed to be identified and modified via taking the personal responsibility of doing the hard work of looking at yourself. And then shifting your energy into making changes. It;s not about blame, it;s about exploration of the self and emergence of new aspects of the self and strengthening of the self. Kudos to you for doing the hard work and not going all the way through life without definition, boundaries and awareness, so you can break the emotional pattern and carry different techniques into your own parenting. And yes, understanding and forgiveness of people as humans with limitations is a part of this extremely complex and generally long term process. No shortcuts. Warmly, Kathy

With the example of the leotard, I'm not sure what the trouble is. You did get what you "needed" by the deadline. Perhaps how you were put off made you feel not loved or not important, but if something is done by a deadline, why does it matter if is a week beforehand or just before? I find that my daughter is often angered and agitated when I don't hop up to her perceived needs when she demands. I believe her true needs are met: she has loving parents who love each other and her, shelter, food, encouragement for intellectual development, opportunity for social growth, relationships with extended family. However, were you to ask her, I do not make her "needs" a priority because I do not schedule my life the way she wants.

Not knowing if your parents will show up to your wedding until they make the decision to do so the night before: a bit more serious than a leotard, I got what I needed by the deadline, but the horrible sinking feeling that stuck with me continues to make it difficult for me to reach out and stay in touch. That it is me - ALWAYS me - that has to do the reaching, whether telephoning, traveling to, mailing cards, or paying for things, has exhausted the bonds I shared with my mother.

my mother in law is a terrible parent, and thank God she didn't have custody of her children. she is manipulative, attention seeking and cruel. She hides it under a think layer of helplessness and sickening sweetness in public or while she is putting on a face ( until it is interrupted by extreme nastiness and intentional cruelty). Our counselor gave him/us a possible diagnosis as well as the "permission" to cut her off, and that was very important as we are no longer slaves to her whims/manipulations and dysfunctional emotions. We understand that she is sick, but it should be obvious with all of the relationships laying in ruin that she should seek out help, but instead she chooses to be too "proud" to get the help that is obviously necessary. We will no longer take her abuse.

I completely understand the writer's point of view, as acknowledgement of an experience that marked her behavior. Nonetheless, many of our thoughts, feelings and behaviors are based on core ideas, nourished by family and society, including this dehumanization of parents, through unreal expectations. Mothers, as women, have a bigger social stigma on what's expected of them. I used to be like that, until I realized that my mom was human: what thoughts were going through her head when she raised me? What traumatic experiences of her own made her to raise me as an anxious child? All I know is she did what she knew best, in her own humanity, as most mothers do. She was a being of her own: it's not real just to demand a mother to just dispose of her personality and feelings when she becomes a parent. It's even worse when motherhood is imposed by society as a " woman's duty", even now when we have more rights. While certainly there shouldn't be absolutely any tolerance for mistreat, it helps a lot to unravel this ideas based on stereotypes and restrictive gender roles to understand and heal. I think that a lot of the "emotional blaming" we do is based on these ideologies, and ideas, as social constructs, can be changed on a collective AND individual level.

When I do something like tell my nervous daughter, "You're ready, just do it." or "Are you going to pout or get up and win?" people look at me like I'm a monster. Uh, no. I was raised by my father who loved me very much. When he said those things they were across the board considered great life lessons, when I say them I'm a narcissistic ice queen. This is 2014, equality for everyone- except mothers.

I'm sorry but I don't think the mother's actions necessarily equate to abusive behavior in this article. By the description the person has given; mother of several children, worker, artist etc. she sounds like she was juggling an awful lot. Curiously the father in this scenario seems absent. What role did he play in helping this mother, woman, human being, in the very demanding task of caring for several children?
What was the mother's state at the time and what issues did she have?
Possibly being a little overstretched I would say which was sadly a very common and is still a very common issue. Particularly with my parent's generation of the 1950s, women were expected to do everything perfectly amid deplorable chauvinism.
So the male psychologist raises his eyebrows in consternation at the statement that she "always came through". His questioning about why it had to get to that stage seems somewhat naive or chauvinistic.
Well, the woman was not the "perfect" mother/woman. But she managed and I would say, pretty well. How would "Mr Psychologist" go juggling similar demands I wonder?

But the answer to "how it got to that stage" is a separate issue: for, the issue here is, "how did that stage affect the child"? Even granting that the "how it got to that stage" was entirely out of the control or choices or capacities of the mother, and granting that the mother had zero help in the child care, and granting that the mother was systematically, inhumanely victimized by societal expectations, it nevertheless is that the mother ended up behaving and acting in a way which was emotionally abusive. Reasons behind abusive behavior may well mitigate the judgment upon the perpetrator, but they do not change the fact of nor the damage caused by the abuse.

Typically, unless someone who's damaged by emotional abuse first recognizes that they were abused, they can't begin to heal from or compensate for that damage. So, "how the perpetrator got to that stage" is initially besides the point. While it has a place in the abused relating to the perpetrator (for example, "I can forgive them because I know they knew no better"), it can distract and hinder the abused from recognizing the abuse for what it was and from recognizing the emotional damage which the abuse inflicted.

The point in the article is that, even IF the mother's behavior was because mom had been a victim herself, in order for her daughter to resolve issues, the daughter first had to recognize that it WAS abusive and to cease rationalizing her mom's behavior.

I disagree with that whole framework of thinking. Why encourage a belief system that sets up victims and perpetrators when they aren't even perceived in the first place - leaving behind broken families and forgiveness that is difficult to give decades later or even after a parent dies?

I believe human beings are capable of higher level morality than victim mentality (which really is narcissistic in nature as pointed out by a previous commenter).

It is possible to heal old wounds while compassionately understanding the struggles of our parents as well. I would argue bringing this kind of frame work to psychology is far more loving, pro-family, holistic, and ultimately healing.

I wholly agree that it's possible to, as you well phrased it, " to heal old wounds while compassionately understanding the struggles of our parents as well".

As a 58-year-old blue collar contractor, agnostic, married 34 years with several now-adult children, who also was parented by the generation which came of age in the ultra-conformist 1950's, I also agree that much "victim mentality" is akin to narcissism.

But, I also have to acknowledge that one's actions, even when done with good intentions and out of what is believed to be right thinking, can harm others. Perhaps "abuse" is too strong a label, but , from the perspective of the effect it has on the others, it's "abuse". The other is a victim, and the one who acted is a perpetrator. And, really, that's the human condition -- our imperfections and limitations and circumstances inevitably mean that we each end up, even unwillingly, victimizing those around us and being victimized by those around us. We're each both victim and perpetrator. Others' actions do affect us, and some of those actions harm us, period.

When the harm others have perpetrated negatively alters our subsequent behavior, then we do best if we take steps to address our subsequent negative behavior. The "why others harmed us" or even the "who harmed us" (while definitely important to address for those reasons you indicate, but separately) isn't the key to repairing our behavior. Rather, the key is addressing our subsequent pattern of behavior.

However, addressing our negative behavior does require seeing it. And, sometimes seeing it does require recognizing it to be a response to harm done to us by others -- in other words, to be a response to abuse. Seeing that what others were doing was indeed abuse can be obscured if it occurred while we were minors -- while we were inexperienced, naive, knowing little or nothing else with which to evaluate or compare what we were experiencing -- and particularly whenthe perpetrator was a well-intentioned authority-figure.

For example -- I have Catholic friends who were schooled by nuns in parochial schools. Some of those nuns well-intentionally administered excessive and humiliating disciplinary actions. That abuse wreaked subsequent negative behavior from my friends for decades. Yet, it was many years before those friends recognized the nuns' actions as "abuse" -- for, in my friends' minds, after all, the nuns had acted with good and best intentions. My friends had rationalized the actions of their abusers to the point where they could not recognize their own negative behavior as a response to abuse.

Meaning, an adult's patterns of negative behavior can root in abuse that wasn't or hasn't yet been perceived as abuse in the first place. Some emotional abuse is subtle, perhaps to the point where the malicious connotations we typically associate with the term "abuse" don't seem applicable. The subtlety can be such that a person is like the proverbial frog in the slowly-boiling water -- the abuse became so typical and familiar that it shaped that person's concept of "normal" and "desireable".

The article author seems to have been in such a situation -- her mom's actions (based not on the isolated leotard anecdote employed to emphasize the point, but upon the author's broader description of her mom) essentially harmed the author to the point where the author accepted such behavior from anyone as "normal" and justifiable. But, the author was unable to recognize her own behavior as negative until her therapist faced her with the fact that her mom's actions had indeed abused her and that her mom's abusiveness had shaped the author's subsequent behavior.

Im sure that was only one example of coming through at the last minute that the writer was referring to. You wouldnt go to a phychologist over one incident of a leotard being purchased at the 11th hour!.

Now I get it. The leotard dialog was less about a trauma than just a teaching moment, in which you were able to recognize your inner dialog of "At least...in the end." which were YOUR excuses for another person's behavior. YOUR excuses, not theirs! This is critical to understanding what you mean when you ask the reader to "recognize and register excuses". A person in a relationship with a narcissist/abuser/crazy person who is not giving you what is necessary for your well-being, knows better than to ever even ask their abuser for excuses, much less expect to get any. Asking for an excuse from them is an opportunity for them to escalate the abuse. It is safer for you make up those excuses ALL BY YOURSELF, FOR YOURSELF, so you can continue to keep that relationship with them, even to your own detriment.

i can relate to the example and message because of my experiences as a child. i don't have children, but i guess i would do it differently than my parents did.
i agree that a childs' needs should have high priority. i'm not sure if planning or prioritizing is the problem. i suspect its a symptom. and i also think judging or labeling in general -and also in storys like this- is incomplete, and then you don't know if you really know the meaning.
i've got friends who grew up with less or more parental care. and there seems to be not a pure relation between amount of parental care or time or love and the feelings that i think you describe or could correlate with that... or at least, that is what i see.

maybe the relationship between these two things is much more complex.

i think judging or labeling is not the most constructive approach for me, and maybe not only for me. not when looking at my parents. and not when looking at relationships. i dealt with the problem in a different way and i know this feels better to me and more true than to look at the behaviour of my parents as abuse, narcisism or to think in terms of prioritizing, nevertheless it could easily be seen like that. in my opinion most -if not all- qualifications fall too short.

maybe i don't understand the message correctly, that's hard to determine, but i think i do, and if i do, i would have expected a more thoughtful perspective coming from a specialist.

I concur with the ones who are asking the questions of what else was going on with the mom. As a single mom, I often have to pick and choose between 2 daughters , both with time and money. Sometimes I am so tired that I forget important things, not because I am bad or toxic. I have always been able to get caught up and ow they are both graduating...one from college and the other from middle school. Have things been easy? Not always. Toxic? Not usually as we are doing the best that we can. We are happier than many people and healthier than most. People should be careful when labling.

Personally I'm disgusted at the way 'psychologists' toss labels onto people. Linda, you come across to me as more of a princess than a victim.

Times change and people mirror the society they grow up in. All of our parents are in a different generation than us. Duh. So Monday-morning quarterbacking a woman who devoted her best years to her kids makes YOU the narcissist Linda, regardless of the crush you had on your male therapist.